If you hate those articles I’m here to make you a very happy person. I’ve seen it suggested multiple times that someone should even the score. For every “7 Things Every Makeup Artist Hates About Their Clients ” article it’s been suggested that there be one “7 Things Your Client Hates About You” article to counter it.

Well…I’m not here to do that.

Don’t you think our society has enough needless anxiety already? Trusting someone else with your hair/face/health/safety/memories/children is hard enough without the constant pressure to tailer yourself, or your actions & reactions to ones deemed acceptable by your current company. Courtesy is one thing, but if the anxiety of needing to be accepted is interfering with your daily life or your sense of self, it’s a problem. It seems the #2 way to get someone to click on your post is to prey on their insecurities. (We all know what #1 is *bow chicka wow wow* I gave up rolling my eyes for lent or else there would be a fantastic gif here.) Tell them you’ve got something they don’t & they’ll feel like they need it to be happy. Make them feel like they’re lacking in some way and they’ll want to know how to fix it. Or maybe they just want a feel a little better about themselves so they click on the article to read about all the things that other people are doing wrong, but surely they’re doing them right…right?

How about we just do away with all of that?

For once, this is an area where it pays to be a little bit like Negan.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather read something nice about myself. I already know all the ways I’m failing. I’m so good at anxiety that I can even second-guess myself over things I’m mostly confident about. I KNOW that I’ve been bathing correctly my entire life (or at least since I hit 13 anyway, if we’re being completely honest) but those articles still have a way of making me doubt myself enough to click on them occasionally. My kids are pretty great – respectful, thoughtful, compassionate, intelligent, sarcastic, funny, resilient (and I’m not just saying that because I’m their mom) – but some days I just don’t know if I’m doing this parenting thing well enough. Maybe I’m guilty of saying something to my kids that is going to destroy their spirit & counteract every good thing I’ve ever taught them? As if the second-guessing wasn’t bad enough on its own, I then get mad at myself for taking precious time out of my day to read even one sentence of that kind of subversive garbage so I close it out & silently berate myself for being stupid. Productive, huh?

So, let’s shut it down.

I’d like it way better if people led with compliments rather than criticism, confidence instead of conceit, kindness in lieu of hostility, authenticity over comparison. Humor. Humility. Honesty. So, that’s what I’m going to do, and not just today; every day. As often as possible.

Anytime I feel like saying something I’m going to ask myself if it’s constructive to do so. Is it true? Can anything positive come out of what I’m about to say? Is it being said with love & good will? If not, then I have two options:

A.) Do what my mama said and keep it to myself

B.) (If I still feel like it needs to be said) Reframe what I need to say in a positive light so as to be clear about the good intentions behind it as opposed to just word vomiting all over someone & leaving them like this poor guy:

He does not know what life is right now. He “can’t even.”

So, this is what we’re gonna do (& yes, the self-proclaimed grammar nazi is comfortable saying “gonna”):

Let’s flip the script & use those articles for good. Send me an inane article you hate. Inbox me. Email me a link. Tag me in it on facebook when you see it. I’ll take as many as I can and reframe them in a positive (hopefully hilarious) way and post them here with a nod back to the original. Then, maybe we can share the shitaki mushrooms out of ours & replace a lot of the negative junk in our news feeds. So, go ahead – don’t be afraid of, annoyed, or “triggered” by those posts anymore. Let’s be amused, affirmed, & enlightened by them instead. ❤

I struggle with beginnings. Sometimes I just don’t know how to greet my audience. Good morning? Hey! Dear Reader…sure, if I want to sound like an advice columnist.

Because I struggle with beginnings, I often choose to just jump right into a post. Welcome to Exhibit A, I’m glad you made it this far. This is the part where I tell you that I’ve totally tricked you as this post has little to do with my struggle in acceptable beginnings; once again, I changed my site name to 1BadBlogger for a reason. It’s actually about my on-going struggle with endings. You can pretty much click on any of these posts to see that completing things is an issue for me: try this one, or this one, or maybe visit here. Those posts are from a 30 day blog challenge it took me approximately 60 days to complete, however that’s a huge improvement from never finishing things at all. Need more proof? Just try searching through my blog posts from the last couple of years and you’re sure to find a few where I’ve said I’m going to share or do something and then only partially followed through. I have an idea, I get excited, I do a few things with it & then, inevitably, I get to a point where I simply lose steam & the whole project shrivels up and quietly dies where it sits. I’ve been practicing seeing things through regardless of my current level of “steam” but as previously mentioned, it takes me twice as long as it’s supposed to. But hey – that’s progress!

At the end of February I challenged myself to a 30 day Social Media Detox. I was going to spend the entire month of March avoiding Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat & Pinterest. The idea is to reconnect with people and the world around you by disconnecting, just a little, from the internet. I was told numerous times that it would be great for stress-relief, my anxiety levels would decrease significantly & I would, overall, be able to experience more real-life joy instead of worrying about trying to document everything for social media. I believe those things to be generally true, but specifically – for me – I was surprised by what happened. Clearly I didn’t make it the full 30 days because here I am on 29th day already summing up the experience for you, but in this case I’m not really upset that I didn’t see the challenge all the way through. If you’re curious, keep reading. If not, you’ve probably already closed the tab and this sentence is completely pointless.

Day 1 – It was hard to stay off Facebook in particular. Once, I even wanted to log in just to post a status about how hard it is not to log on to Facebook to post a status.

Day 2 – I failed. Already. I found myself feeling forced to log on to Facebook to post about a fundraiser the girls were having for school. It was fruitless and I should have just told them I posted to Facebook instead of actually doing it, but I have this annoying policy about trying not to lie to my children. I couldn’t even pull off the Santa thing for a whole 4 years. Or the Tooth-Fairy thing, or the Easter Bunny thing, or any of the commercialized, supposedly-magical, (or actually magical) things. The only thing I’ve successfully lied to them about (that I can think of at this current moment) is that boy babies come from Home Depot & girl babies come from their store of choice. (Girl babies started off at Wal-Mart and then I thought wait…why do girls have to come from Wal-Mart? Why can’t they come from Bath & Body Works, Sephora, a fancy shoe store, or I don’t know…Game Stop?) It’s a double standard, I know, because clearly I didn’t struggle with Home Depot as the birthing place for boys, but my only son loves Home Depot so it was an easy lie for him to swallow until he hit the age of 9. This is a rabbit I don’t need to chase right now, but maybe there’s a blog post on that in the future? No promises though; remember, I’m bad at finishing things. The point is that on day 2 I was already allowing my arm to be twisted into making exceptions on my 30 day detox. It’s a good thing I’m not addicted to anything more dangerous than an iPhone.

Day 3: I wanted to log onto Facebook to see if anyone responded to the post about the girls’ fundraiser, but I refrained. I thought Instagram was going to be the challenging one to stay away from but Facebook was clearly the biggest challenge.

Day 4: It was hard not to check Facebook in the mornings like I usually do. I had no trouble staying off everything else, but all it did was give me more time to play Candy Crush. I told myself I didn’t want to defeat the purpose of staying off social media by continuing to spend an inordinate amount of time on my phone so I deleted Candy Crush too.

Day 5: I reinstalled Candy Crush.

Day 6: My diary of notes that I was keeping on my phone tells me that I hadn’t noticed many positive effects of not using social media at this point. My husband was still sharing (mostly fake) Facebook news and stupid survey posts with me (“hey babe, this says my spirit animal is a bear.” Okay…) so the things I was really trying to get a break from, I was still exposed to even after actively trying to avoid them. Now I’m thinking day 6 was a little early to be expecting any benefits.

Days 7 – 14: On day 7 I was too busy getting ready for a trip home to worry about social media. I spent the day cleaning, packing and not really missing it at all. Day 8 was all driving home so no time for it then either. Days 9-12 were spent at home with family and that’s always a busy whirlwind of events which don’t give me time for much else, though I did log on to both Facebook and Instagram on day 9 to post an updated picture of my freshly-styled hair. I couldn’t NOT share this.

Day 13 was mostly driving back to Florida & crashing once I got home. Day 14 was getting the kids back to school & using the day to recuperate from the trip. Plus, I had insane hives; so many that my face swelled up to twice its normal size so Instagram selfies were out of the question. I was so annoyed that I did post a status on Facebook about it. I promptly closed Facebook out and didn’t visit or reply to any comments that day though.

Days 15 – 18: were spent indoors hiding from world due to a red, swollen face that looked a lot like this:

It’s safe to say I was more interested in my bed and SOA on Netflix than I was in being sociable with anybody, but still – I did reply to a few comments on my previous Facebook post.

Day 19: I felt & looked a lot better by this time, but I didn’t make any notes on this day so I can’t remember exactly what we did. I checked my Facebook page and there are no posts or comments from me so I can only assume I successfully avoided it on this day. I do know that I had successfully avoid Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat completely. I didn’t even miss Twitter (because I never actively use it anyway) or Snapchat. Pinterest was harder because I wanted to search for house decorating ideas, but Google sufficed in that instance and I didn’t pin a thing. Success!

Day 20: I got several email notifications of having been tagged on Facebook. I did not succumb to the temptation to check them.

Day 21: This is where my Facebook and Instagram activity both go back to being used at least once a day. I had to share this lovely picture from the beach. I still wasn’t logging on to Twitter, Snapchat or Pinterest though.

Days 22-29: I logged on to Facebook at least once daily (multiple times on the 24th-today, the 29th) and Instagram quite a bit. I had pretty much given up on the need to “detox” so much as just really limit my exposure. If I caught myself scrolling mindlessly I would check myself and close the apps out to go do something productive.

The final result of the detox:

As you can clearly see, I technically failed, but I can honestly say I’m not disappointed about the experience at all. I didn’t go a full 30 days completely avoiding all social media – and maybe my results would have been different if I had – but here is what I noticed in a nutshell:

It did not decrease my anxiety or stress because none of that stuff was coming from social media. If anything, the use of social media (in appropriate amounts) really helps me with those things.

The vast majority of the people I follow share funny, inspiring, wonderful things that really uplift me. I try to do the same with my posts. It didn’t free up anymore time than usual because all I did was fill that time with Candy Crush & internally cussing out Licorice Larry (pathetic, I know). As long as I’m not spending an inordinate amount of time on it and overloading, I feel great. I accomplish what I need to during the day, I sleep enough at night, I have time to exercise, I have time for my family, I have time to write…social media isn’t taking away from any of that. It used to a few years ago, but I have actively been trying to correct that and I can see now that I’ve done a pretty good job. I’ve learned how to use it in small doses that have more of a positive impact than a negative one. Social media isn’t the problem; it’s how much time you actually spend on it and the quality of that time when you do. If you’re always reading someone’s drama, sharing sad stuff, using it to avoid your real life, finding yourself annoyed or depressed, or comparing your life to someone else’s life then of course it’s going to be kind of a crappy experience for you. So don’t use it that way!

If you want the longer, more detailed novel-like explanation that I wrote before I wrote the “in a nutshell version” here it is (just because I can’t stomach having written all that stuff and then just deleting it). Otherwise, feel free to skip to the section in bold at the bottom as I know you have way more important things to do than stay here and read my (redundant) babbling. 🙂

People told me I would experience a decrease in stress and anxiety, I’d find myself with more free time, spending more time with my family, etc.; all great things, obviously. What I noticed was that I already do a lot of those things. I already spend A LOT of time with my family and when I am actively spending time with them the desire to check Facebook or be on my phone isn’t really there at all. I easily avoided taking phone calls when I was having conversations with my husband. On several of those days I took forever to respond to texts because I was too busy talking to my hubs or my kids, or driving, or any number of other things. We visited Georgia, we did household chores together, we went walking, riding bikes, we went to the beach, we went to the pool several of those days. Each time, I posted a photo or two (in one case an album with more than 5 photos) and then I logged off, OR I waited until we were home and the kids were cleaning up or otherwise engaged to post. The point is that I realized I don’t spend a lot of time on my phone when I’m actively engaged in activities with my family. I already try to be as present as possible in those scenarios and I discovered that the time I spend on Facebook or social media is usually what I would consider my free time anyway. I may use Facebook during the day when the kids are at school to procrastinate washing dishes, but I don’t neglect my family in favor of scrolling, liking, or seeing how many surveys or “name-tests” I can take.

I also noticed that my anxiety doesn’t come from being on Facebook. I don’t socialize very much with people who share things that make me feel annoyed, sad, or just generally bad after having read it. I promptly delete or simply unfollow those people once I recognize that as a pattern. (There’s a difference in sharing the occasional rant, bad mood, sad news, vent, etc. and doing it all the time.) If I notice that I regularly feel bad after spending time with a certain person I either cut that person out of my life or, if it’s someone I can’t really cut out due to family relations or other deep ties with them, I really limit my exposure to that person to decrease those negative feelings without completely cutting them out of the picture. Social media is meant to be fun & to keep you in contact with people you can’t regularly see or hang out with and that’s mostly how I’ve been using it. All you people complaining about the stupidity and drama in your lives: newsflash – you have complete control over that, especially online. If you don’t like it, change it.

I did this challenge because I felt like I needed a reset. Maybe I was getting back into a bad habit of using social media too much and that’s why I felt the need? I’m not really sure. I just know I heard a little voice tell me to take a break & I went with it. The only thing I really found out is that I need to delete my Twitter account & maybe my Snapchat, because I REALLY didn’t miss one and I barely missed the other. I haven’t logged on to either of them once in nearly a month, nor have I been tempted to. Facebook and Instagram is all I’m really interested in & I discovered that I do a pretty good job of managing my time on both of those. I didn’t need 30 days of social media detox from them because I find that using them is beneficial to me rather than the opposite, but like I said: if you find that is not the case for you, change it! Maybe a 30 day social media detox will be more successful for you than it was for me. Have you done it before? How did it go? What were your impressions during and after? Do you plan to do it in the future?

Day 8 for the blogging challenge is a little late because today has been a long day. I don’t anticipate this being a long post; I’m currently quite a sleepy blogger. Today is all about my 5 current goals. All of my goals require me to Adult, with which I’m currently experiencing technical difficulties.

Listed in order of priority:

5.) Getting new items listed on Adopt-a-Dish. I want to create some new stuff this year. I want to write new stories for my pieces, make my Facebook page more interactive and engaging. In general, I simply want to have more fun with it. I’m not looking to get rich selling hand-painted dishes; I only want to wake up in the mornings and be able to say that I enjoy what I do.

4.) Make friends. We moved to Florida 6 months ago and I still don’t have friends here. At first, I didn’t see the point in making friends since our move was intended to be very temporary, but that’s what social media is for. Besides, I need a workout buddy. Someone who can help hold me accountable. Someone I can go have lunch with occasionally. I’ve been encouraging my kids to socialize and make friends so I’d be a hypocrite not to do the same myself.

*Note: I just want to point out that my not having friends here shouldn’t make you feel pangs of pity or anything. :p I don’t feel like I’m lacking anything; my life here is so full and wonderful. The main reason I haven’t made any friends here is because I haven’t tried to do so. I’ve been so busy with my own family, sight-seeing, and painting that going out to socialize just didn’t rank high on my list of priorities. I’m only wanting to make it a priority now because I know myself well enough to know that it could become a problem for me later and I don’t want that. I encourage my kids to get out of their comfort zones and build healthy relationships with different types of people, so they need to see me doing the same.

3.) Making health a priority/spending more time outdoors. This has been on my priority list for years and I’ve been making slow progress. I eat a ton more green things now than I used to, thank you very much. I do want to kick it up a notch this year though. I want to utilize the gym here in our community more. I used to go to a yoga class 2-3 times a week when we were in GA (before things got really hectic and I couldn’t anymore) so if I can fit it in our budget I’d like to do that again since there’s a studio close by. At the very least I’d like to accomplish the above goal so I have a (home) yoga buddy or gym partner. Maybe take my dog for more walks, visit the park more.

2.) Starting The Cuteness on a Brain Balance Program. If you’ve never heard of it, look it up; I believe it will be absolutely amazing for her, and us as a family.

And that leaves the main priority as:

1.) Determining what our more immediate future holds. Things may change dramatically for us in the next 6 months & I’m really struggling with deciding what shape those changes are going to take & how we’re going to navigate them. I need someone to pray that God miraculously makes us an adultier couple because we’re going to need the guidance of a beings far wiser than ourselves to make these decisions and see them through.

What are your 5 current goals? How close or far away are you to achieving those goals?

Well, we are still rocking the points system. We have changed some point values, added things, taken away things…but the idea is still the same. The kids have gotten so used to it that we don’t even need the list anymore. The only time we use it is when I need an idea for something they can earn points for that they haven’t done in a while.

We have had less groundings because the deduction of points seems to be a sufficient punishment in itself for the most part, especially when you have children that are often in the red. We decided if the kids have negative points there won’t be any TV, electronics, playtime, etc. until they are positive again (so logical & adult-y, right?!) so they work harder to earn those privileges & to keep them.

We used to have it set up where they bought their TV and iPad time using points, but now we just allow them to do those things provided they’ve completed homework, chores, and do not have negative points. It’s not like they get an over abundance of that during the school year anyway. They can spend points on a later bedtime if there’s a show they want to stay up and watch or something, but only after we have verified their grades are in good standing (so it doesn’t start until after the first progress report) and we don’t have trouble waking them up the next morning. As soon as getting up becomes a problem or grades drop below a B, later bedtimes are off the table.

My girls are negative right now because both of them keep losing, or wasting toiletries. Both girls are constantly losing their toothbrushes or using their shampoo/conditioner/body soap/hand soap to make “potions” or other imaginative girly things with them so, with the help of some Facebook friends we came up with a solution: make them buy their toiletries with points. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me sooner. The girls both had to buy a toothbrush, toothpaste, and body wash last night which put them both in the red. I told them they’d have to earn those points back before they could have free time today. I gave them an easy opportunity though.

I felt a wee bit biblical this morning. Also, my handwriting looks atrocious…But on the bright side, you think I can convince them that this is actually a verse from the bible?

We shall see who jumps on it first. I’m just so glad this points system is working for them. Minion #1 even saved up enough points to buy himself his very own android tablet & a case to go with it. Minion #3 is currently saving her points to buy (I kid you not) her very own jar of pickles. Pickles. 😂😂 I see her priorities rest very heavily on food. Minion #2 isn’t saving for anything specific just yet. She gets in the most trouble out of all of them; sometimes I think she just earns points so that I can take them away, lol. She will get there. I’m going to try to get her to set a goal as soon as she gets back to black. See what I did there? :p

Have you tried any of these methods with your kids? How successful (or not) have your attempts been? What things work for you? Maybe I can get some insight on other ways I can help inspire and motivate my strong-willed middle child from your comments! 🙂 Thanks for reading!

A couple weeks ago I shared a rather disturbing photo of a Harry Potter Booger Vulture. Then I had the following conversation on Facebook that brought about this post…and this one.

I decided I should probably give boogers the attention they deserve since I already posted about them once and still have to share the results of the poll that I took.

Speaking of the poll I took, here are the results. It is not just a Harry Potter Booger Vulture…it’s now a love child from some freaky animal/wizard orgy. Must have been the result of a Winter Solstice celebration. O.o

The problem with that is that boogers already get far more attention than they actually deserve. We’re blowing them, wiping them, picking them, sucking them in, and in the case of babies, sucking them out with those big scary booger suckers.

Our kids have also been known to play with them and even eat them a time or two. After all that, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m so over boogers. With that said, I genuinely hope this is the last booger related post I ever do.

Since I’m a mom…my future in that department isn’t looking too bright.

Such a short, simple post had me contemplating this digital age we live in. It has given us so much. Technology & those who study/create it have provided the world with innovative tools for building/creating, healing, inventing, doing business, staying in touch with far-away friends & family, & even making new friends despite distance & other circumstances. It has afforded us new, sometimes easier ways to earn a living & support our loved ones. Blogging & YouTube are among the many tools people use to gain the notoriety which has led to some of those people being able to make ends meet without doing much more than sitting in front of a computer screen. We can thank YouTube for Justin Bieber.

Speaking of Justin Bieber, that brings me to all the other undesirable things our digital age has bestowed upon us.

I realize we have to take the bad with the good (the ‘sh_t with the sugar’ if you ask my husband) and that makes perfect sense. But sometimes I wonder if the good we’re getting is worth the price we’re paying for it. For example, the internet is a largely dominant force in our modern society. Like…the most epic invention in the history of ever. But what has it cost us?

With the internet came amazing things like instant access to information, the ability for anyone to contribute content from anywhere, and a constant flow of knowledge about nearly anything right at your fingertips. It birthed the idea of social media, digital books, tablets & smartphones. It also brought us some problems.

Such as: 1.) Instant access to information: now instant gratification is the norm causing many people to lack patience & the basic knowledge of how to find a book in a library when the internet is down. People don’t know what to do with themselves when there isn’t some form of technology close by. I’m guilty of it, too. We all look like this without a computer or a smartphone in our hands:

For God’s sake, use your internet-free time wisely; go learn how to hunt or build something! We used to make steel in this country!

2.) The ability for anyone to contribute content from anywhere. True or false, good or bad, for better or worse.

I thought you couldn’t put anything that wasn’t true on the internet?

3.) A constant flow of knowledge about nearly anything right at your fingertips. You have access to a multitude of great education, sure, but you also have people searching for how to kill babies without getting caught & then leaving them in hot cars while sending explicit messages to minors. AND you don’t know if that is even what actually happened; all you know is what the internet told you & the internet has so many sources for telling us things that we can never know which things are actually legitimate and which aren’t. Luckily, there’s a great source that helps with that called snopes.com, but they can’t tackle every falsehood on the internet and they’re even bound to be wrong themselves a time or two.

All those problems come with their own little subset of other problems.

Now we don’t have to be stationary to be on the internet. We can tweet while walking down a busy street or at dinner with our families. We can upload videos and give minute by minute updates on what we’re doing, what other people are doing, where we are, etc. We ignore the people we’re with so that we can let everyone who isn’t with us know what they’re missing (which is usually nothing). We have to have documented proof that we were there, wherever “there” is at the time. Being a photographer, I’m guilty of it, too. I want to preserve memories. I don’t want to forget anything so I want to document everything. But, we’ve forgotten how to just be where we are. We are so concerned with chronicling every moment of our existence that we actually miss the most important part of it. The part where we’re actually living & participating in life & not just documenting it. You should tweet that. (I’m kidding. I’m not kidding. I want you to join me in something later, so if you tweet that, other people can join us. But it’s totally up to you. Watch the video & read on…)

I’m going to practice just being where I am and enjoying the moments I’m given without the constant distraction of phones or social media. I won’t succeed 100% of the time, but I am going to make a conscious effort to put my phone on silent & tuck it away when I’m visiting with friends &/or family or at the dinner table. To leave it off or silenced unless I need it when hiking, exercising, driving, etc. To do more during the day than just blog & type random words into google search bars just to see what weird things people are searching for. To exercise, to enjoy fresh air, to learn without google, to discover new hobbies, make new friends the old fashioned way…

The goal is simply to live more in the present. I hope you’ll join me. That doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t take a picture of a beautiful view, message a friend we never see or update our status when our kid does something hilarious…we’re just a making a more conscious effort to pick our phones up less & participate more with life than we do with Facebook. I don’t think that’s asking a lot. Maybe some of us can even learn how to use the Dewey Decimal System or read a paper map. 😉 Tweet &/or share to FB to let me know you’re in & hopefully others will jump in, too!

Maybe we can help make this sad – albeit humorous – photo a little less true. And no, that does not mean you have my permission to share a YouTube video of me dancing like a mentally-challenged string bean…unless you tag me in it.

I took requests today. Not musical requests. Even better; writing requests; ergo I’m a wordpress DJ, y’all. Let’s see where it gets me.

My Facebook post requesting requests (yeah, that’s a thing) was endowed with a plethora of ideas, all of which I am pretty much jumping out of my skin with excitement about. One friend in particular had some awesomely unique ideas on what she was interested in hearing me preach write about. I’m totally indecisive so I’m going to fit as many of them into one post as possible and pray it doesn’t surpass the word count of a Twilight novel.

First, let’s just focus on the fact that I used the word “ergo.” Ergo is the same as “hence” or “therefore” yet people (in my general area) tend to think it’s this fancy word not suitable to pass through the lips (or fingertips) of Booger-Bottom/Manchester folks. (And yes, Out-Of-Town-Readers, Booger-Bottom is a for real place and no, you will not find it on Google Maps.) Can we just clear something up? Ergo doesn’t actually classify as a “big word.” Just because you don’t use it doesn’t make it a “big” or “fancy” word. Just because you think it’s spelled “air-go” doesn’t make it fancy either. On the same note, using ergo doesn’t make you smart, but does make you seem smarter. Some of y’all might want to give it a try…just sayin’. Experiment!! >> The next time you have to do a report for school, pull out the thesaurus and use it to bulk up your paper with vernacular even your English teacher probably hasn’t seen and you’ll likely pass just because he or she doesn’t want to have to pull out the dictionary to discern the meaning of your essay or admit to an acne-faced teen that their intelligence has been challenged by a tall wad of walking hormones. I personally think any 15 year old that can use “loquacious” correctly in a sentence deserves at least a 10 point head start on all the other kids. Even more if said teenager will openly admit to being a pretentious turd with full knowledge of what the word “pretentious” means. Just don’t pull a Stephenie Meyer or an E. L. James; let’s save terms like “incredulously” and “wanton” for glittery vampire BDSM novels, m’kay?

Speaking of Stephenie Meyer:

A.) Her name is Stephenie Meyer. Not Stephanie Meyer. Not Stephanie Meyers. No “a” in her first name, no “s” in her last.

B.) Why were there no lemurs in Twilight? Lemurs are obviously reincarnated Cullens. Or Cullens are reincarnated from lemurs; take your pick.

Just look at their eyes. And the sitting position. Totally related.

In the scene where Edward-Lemur-Hands walks into the sunlight for the first time, there was something missing. They had the sunlight, they had the pasty, weirdly semi-hairy bird-chest, they even CGI’d some (decidedly pathetic) abs on the man. But they were missing a very important part. The part where Edward’s lemur relation recognizes the glittering epidermis and golden eyes of his kin and thus propels himself from the tree directly above only to land precisely onto Edward’s head, clamp his little lemur claws around Mr. Cullen’s face and proceed to give him enthusiastic, dangerous, family reunion worthy “grandma-has-your-cheeks-in-a-death-grip” type hugs and teeth-baring, rabies-inducing kisses. Of course Edward, with all his vampire speed and strength, would freak out and immediately begin running causing the velocity and intensity of the wind itself to rip the entire coat of fur from the poor lemur’s body, leaving him naked and creating a sort of lemur-shaped hat for Edward to wear over his bouffant. His HORRIBLE, giggle-worthy bouffant. So horrible, in fact, that wearing a lemur hat over it actually makes it BETTER. Then, the lemur relative would have no choice but to become wildly offended and embarrassed that his own flesh and blood would be so crude as to depants him in front of a lady thus causing him to recruit the entire village of lemurs from all the Madagascar movies to Forks, Washington for purposes of Cullen-Clan Ass Kicking. Forget the Volturi; The Lemurs are the ones to be feared.

Immediately after the lemurs on the “Fear Me Scale” would be the zebra because important philosophical musings questioning whether a zebra is more white or more black could only lead to political debates on racism and supremacy that no one in Forks (or Spoons or wherever the heck you people live) would want to stick around for. That racial stuff just gets downright nasty and is entirely unnecessary. Stay. Away. From. The. Zebra’s! Don’t cross the lemurs, but don’t even speak to the zebra’s.

Those zebra’s are hard core, man.

They will trap you and get you to say things that will inevitably offend them. They’re like (some) women.

Exhibit A:

Woman: “Honey, does this make me look fat?”

Man: “No. You look beautiful.”

Woman: “You lying sack of _______ ***** _______*@#!$!!!!”

Exhibit B:

Woman: “Honey, does this make me look fat?”

Man: “Um….”

Woman: “I can’t believe you just said that you _______*@#!$!!!!”

Exhibit C:

Woman: “Honey, does this make me look fat?”

Man: “Yup.”

Woman: *cries – followed with numerous, snotty expletives.*

Just like zebra’s, there’s no winning with (some) women either. It’s best just to stay away from words like “fat” and “lose” and “weight” and “diet” and “antidisestablishmentarianism.” If you want your zebra lady to lose weight, the best thing you can do is start working out yourself. Encourage her to do activities with you that will be fun and get you out doing things together, but will also burn calories. Then you’re getting hot again, she’s getting hot again and you’re not being an ass about it. Win-win. Same works for men except you might have better luck getting them to run if you hi-jack the TV remote, put on some Nike’s and jog around the neighborhood blasting “Eye Of The Tiger” and holding aforementioned remote above your head like the golden egg in Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire.

That’s about all the golden nuggets of wisdom I have in me today. I hope it made you laugh. Just saying the word “nuggets” makes me laugh. I’ll be back tomorrow (or Monday) with more McNuggets. *chuckle* I don’t know if they’ll be golden, but they’ll be interesting, that’s for sure. Thanks to everyone who contributed an idea to my writing list. I’m going to try to touch on all of them in the coming weeks. Have a great (zebra-free) weekend!

Can you believe the way this scandalous heffa is hatin’ on the zebra? I’m shocked and appalled.

Note: I waited until I was parked in the pick-up line at my kids’ school before I wrote this so you can’t incarcerate me for texting (or blogging to be more specific) and driving. Safety first!! 🙂

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I was just driving home thinking about a friend’s baby when it occurred to me that I haven’t written in my kids’ baby books in ages. Then I thought, “it’s totally okay…I write in their journals and I catalogue basically everything online.” And then another thought hit me.

Who needs a baby book?! When I die, my kids can totally take inventory of their entire lives via Facebook!

I normally don’t post things like this because they look so unbelievable and downright spammy, but this giveaway is the real deal. Offered from Rachel Brenke, The LawTog.

If you’re a photographer looking for any legal advice or legal materials such as contracts, forms, etc. she is the one to go to! I’ve taken her Business 101 workshop and loved it. I learned so much. So without further ado, here’s the deal:

Just click the image to go to her shop & help yourself to all the helpful resources!! 🙂

Happy Shopping!

And I WILL get back to regular blogging one of these days, but right now I’ve got so much on my plate that blogging has taken a back seat. Besides, you’d be really bored if I blogged about anything real in my life right now because it’s mostly work and not a lot of play. To which I give a loud and hearty “POO!”

You know how I have to be inspired to write stuff and things and other stuff? Well, thanks Girl on the Contrary. You inspire me. *Jazz Hands!*

And all the rest of you would do well to be inspired by her, too! Her blog is my favorite out of all the ones I follow, not just because she’s absolutely brilliant and always makes me laugh, but because her thoughts are just as weird and random as my own. (Also because I want her on my team when the apocalypse inevitably arrives.) My problem? I facebook my weird thoughts and she blogs hers which, ya know…creates more readers and facebook sort of doesn’t do that.

I don’t care so much about having a famous blog, but then I got to thinking (which is dangerous) that it’s a shame more people outside my immediate circle don’t know how hard that little purple guy in my brain works to create all this incredible mind poop I’ve got churning around up in here. But then that made me think that there’s literally a guy taking a dump in my brain which was one part entertaining and five parts highly unpleasant so I had to clip that train of thought before it could come to completion. Then that made me think about the poopie list the boys used to laugh about in middle school because the thought of clamping off thoughts that originate from a guy taking a crap in my head made me think of the last poopie on the list:

The Dangling Poopie: This Poopie refuses to drop into the toilet even though you know you are done Poopie-ing it. You just pray that a shake or two will cut it loose.

After all this talk about poop, I bet you’re wondering what you’re still doing here; I know I am.

What I actually wanted to talk about was how I suggested GotC learn Tibetan Throat Singing as part of her New Years Resolution. If she doesn’t do it, I’ll have to. Why, you ask?

Because it sounds like a fun and bizarre thing to write on a job application and also because it’s totally useless and as such, is pretty much guaranteed to afford me any government position I so desire. Also…it’s a real thing. Google can prove it.

So, if I learn this, I’m thinking my candidacy in the next US Presidential Election is a sure thing. Obviously, you don’t have to have any viable skills to run for anything in this country so, based on that outlook, Tibetan Throat Singing could take me farther than my wildest dreams (which are pretty freaking wild). Your parents always tell you when you’re growing up that you can be anything you want to be and achieve anything you set your mind to. Well my mind is set on using indecipherable throat sounds to coerce the country into hiring me to dominaterule run it.